Letter #22 from Australia

December 20, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

          It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, in photos from home. Wow it is hot here in Australia!!! This week we have hit record highs and have been having a lot of fires in the area. Do not worry, Mum, we are safe and the fires are about 30-45 mins away from us. So we are safe and protected! The hottest it got this week was 42 degrees Celsius, which is about 107 degrees Fahrenheit, so it has been pretty hot. But it also has been a very strange week as well, as far as the weather goes. Yesterday, Sunday, it was 41 degrees as we were leaving church but it looked really cloudy. We had a lot of bush fires start yesterday because of how hot it was. Then about 2 hours later, it was hailing and a huge thunderstorm hit. We were now on thunderstorm warning instead of bush fire warning. We went from fires to floods in a matter of a couple hours. Weird day but we are safe and all goods!

          This week was great!! We got a new investigator named Zach Edwards and he is awesome. Elder Solomon and Elder Lin Khaisong, tracted into him about two weeks ago, when they were on exchanges, and they set up a time for us to come back the following week. We visited him on Tuesday and he invited us in as soon as we got there, not what we were expecting at all. Especially because he is 29 years old and young adults aren't usually interested. We went in and taught him the restoration lesson and he was really interested!!! We challenged him to be baptized and he accepted it!!! His baptismal date is set for the 9th of January. We are excited for him and for his commitment to be baptized! We hope all goes well and that he continues to be keen about learning the gospel. 

          I hope that you all have a great Christmas and enjoy all of the wonderful traditions that you have. I love this time of the year and the amazing opportunity that we all have to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Remember what is important and give back to our Savior by serving someone this year! I love you all! Merry Christmas!

Love,
Elder Wheeler

Mission Christmas party down in Melbourne! Here are all of us
back together! We all were in the MTC together and it was
great to see everyone and ask how they are doing!!
Especially Elder Wiser!!! 

Branch Christmas party was fun! They asked me to be Santa Claus...
it was...interesting to say the least. 

As you can see, we all had a lot of fun...at least some of us did...

Little Ryan sitting on Santa's lap!! 

I asked for Steve to come up too! I didn't think he
actually would!! Fun time though!!

We finally got around to decorating our flat for Christmas!
The presents, aka packages from home, are all under
the tree ready for Christmas morning!!!